Chapter XXII.
March to Mao and improvement of the road—Lieutenant Raban—Constant troubles with Burmah—Visit to Mr. Elliott at Kohima—A tiger hunt made easy—A perilous adventure—Rose bushes—Brutal conduct of Prince Koireng—We leave Manipur for England.
In November, I marched to Mao on the Naga Hills frontier, and arranged for the improvement of some of the halting places on the way. I also asked Sir Steuart Bayley, the Chief Commissioner, to allow Lieutenant Raban, R.E., to visit Manipur, with a view to laying out the line of a cart road from the Manipur valley to Mao. This arrangement he sanctioned, and Lieutenant Raban arrived in Manipur on December 30th, 1880. The line from Sengmai was bad throughout, and an exceedingly difficult one in many places. Thangal Major accompanied us, and I had induced the Maharajah to open out a narrow road, on being supplied with the necessary tools. We carefully examined the whole of the road in detail, and, after deciding on the line to adopt, cut the trace. It was a matter requiring great skill and patience, both of which Lieutenant Raban had. He was very ably seconded by the Manipuris, whose keen intelligence made them good auxiliaries. Often the line had to be cut along the face of a cliff, but fortunately the rock was soft, and the work was accomplished without accident. The way we turned the head of the Mao river, the descent to and ascent from which I had so often, so painfully accomplished, was a great success, and did not materially increase the distance, as we saved it by striking the main path at different points.[1]
In the village of Mukhel near which we passed, we saw a pear tree three or four hundred years old, and greatly venerated by the villagers. In the same village I saw a Naga cut another man’s hair with a dao (sword). The operation was performed most dexterously and neatly, by holding the dao under the hair, and then slightly tapping the latter with a small piece of wood. The result was that the hair-cutting was as neatly accomplished as it could have been by the best London hair-dresser. I asked a fine young Naga why all his tribe wore a single long tuft of hair at the back? He at once replied, “To make the girls admire me,” and added that without it, he should be laughed at. This is the only explanation I ever had of the curious fact that most of the Naga tribes wear a long tuft behind, like Hindoos. By the third week in January we had laid out the line of road. Thangal Major approved of most of it, but said, regarding the piece between Sengmai and Kaithemahee, “I will cut it as I promised, but who will ever use it?” I differed from him, as nothing could exceed the tortuous and hilly nature of the old road, running as it did across one succession of spurs and deep ravines, one of the most heart-breaking paths I ever went along. Within a month of its completion the old path was entirely deserted.
My health was beginning to break down entirely. I had been very ill during and immediately after the Naga Hills Expedition, and during the last march I was laid up one or two days. My wife had long been a sufferer, but she did not like to leave me, and I did not like to leave Manipur while the frontier was disturbed and the Kongal case unsettled. However, now I felt that we both must have change, and our children also were of an age to go home.
On my return from looking after the road, fresh complications awaited me. News came from Chattik of the Sumjok (Thoungdoot) authorities having again caused dissension and joined with another village in firing on a Manipuri piquet. This had led to reprisals on the part of the Manipuris, who attacked and drove out the enemy. All this was done without our relations with Sumjok being anything but strained, the act of hostility being unauthorised. The ill-defined nature of the frontier was such, that neither party could be said to be in the right or wrong. The Kuki, Chussad, and other frontier villages took advantage of the state of things to plunder the Tankhools, and the latter in their turn appealed to Manipur.
I felt that, until something was done to set things on a right footing, I could not leave. Sir Steuart Bayley was about this time appointed to Hyderabad, which added to my difficulties, as he was intimately acquainted with the situation, and of course a change in the administration necessarily means delay. The Burmese authorities, knowing what I now do, were always, as I then believed, favourably inclined to us; the ill-feeling was entirely on the part of Sumjok, whose Tsawbwa had influence at Mandalay, and was able to prevent justice being done in the case in which he was so discreditably concerned. He also took advantage of this influence to carry on the guerilla warfare he did through the Chussads, who disliked Manipur, on account of some treacherous behaviour on her part in former years.
As the spring advanced, of course the danger of hostilities became less. Cæsar said, ”Omnia bella hieme requiescunt.” The reverse holds good in India, and on the eastern frontier the fiercest tribes keep quiet in the rainy season.[2]
In March, I heard that Mr. (now Sir Charles) Elliott, the new Chief Commissioner, was about to visit Kohima, where he wished to meet me, and I set off on my way there, arriving on the 19th, being well received all along the road by the people of the different villages. I had a long talk with the Chief Commissioner about the affairs of Manipur, and the necessity for a survey and delimitation of the boundary between it and Burmah during the ensuing cold weather, and then returned. The new road had been opened out to such a width, except here and there—I was able to ride the whole distance.
The weather was lovely, and the rhododendrons near Mao, and the wild pears, azaleas, and many other flowering trees along my route, made the long journey a most pleasant one. Let me say here, while on the subject of the road, that, notwithstanding all the criticisms passed on it and predictions of its uselessness, it proved of immense, nay, incalculable value during the Burmese War of 1885–86, and the sad troubles of 1891. It was throughout of an easy gradient, never exceeding one in twenty, and, had a bullock train been established, might have been used from an early date for conveying produce from Manipur to the stations of Kohima.